


how did we get here?

by orphan_account



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: David Acting as Max's Parental Figure | Dadvid (Camp Camp), F/M, Gwen Acting as Max's Parental Figure (Camp Camp), Gwen-centric (Camp Camp), It reads like Gwen is talking to her therapist about the whole fic, Minor Original Character(s), Non-Explicit Sex, Postpartum Depression, Teen David (Camp Camp), Therapy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:20:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23788471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Gwen regales the tale of how the biggest band geek in Maryland ended her senior year of high school with a baby.orMax is David and Gwen's son, and they are both not ready to be parents at 17.
Relationships: David & Max (Camp Camp), David/Gwen (Camp Camp), Gwen & Max (Camp Camp)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	1. Ch. 1

“At the beginning? Do you mean my parents? Well, my parents, let me tell you, are a weird beginning. My dad is Lucky Louie Jones, as the rock musician from the 70s when rock was cool. And my mom is a nurse. 

It’s one of those love stories straight from a movie, I swear. My dad hadn’t settled down in his whole life, he was in his mid-thirties on the road with groupies and never with committed relationships. And my mom was too involved with her work for relationships. She is a nurse at a nursing home, so she deals with dying patients a lot, which really doesn’t put you in a dating mood I’m sure. But my Nana Rosie, she changed all that. Nana wanted her son to have a traditional life and to meet a girl and get married. And my mom was Nana’s nurse. Nana really liked my mom and got my dad to visit her because she told him she was dying. So Louis Jones stops his tour to visit his mama only to find out she was ‘dying for him to meet this girl’ and introduced Nurse Claire and Louis. 

My dad would visit my Nana a lot more to see Claire, my mom. And they started dating after Nana egged and pushed them together all the time.

Nana Rosie got really sick and ended up passing away, and she put in her will she wanted her precious boy Louis to give his future wife the engagement ring she received from my Grandpa William., but only if he married that Claire Joseph girl. I mean, my Nana’s dying wish was for my parents to get married! That’s crazy, right? Anyway, my parents are stupidly in love, and they have me. My mom got ovarian cancer when I was really little, and she was saying how much she regretted now “living” before dying. She ended up getting a hysterectomy which made her cancer gone, and she quit her job so she could live her life. She followed my dad on tour and sang with him and they travel everywhere so my mom can see the things she never would have. They’re idealists, and I admire it I guess but it can be smothering, too. I mean my mom quit a well-paying job to live in a van for crying out loud! And my dad never works, he just plays music and gets paid to do that. They love their lives.

I think my mom always wished she could have another kid. They didn’t want to stop with me, but with my mom’s ovarian cancer they had to. And I think that’s why my parents coddle me so much: I was the only child they would ever have. 

How does David come into it? Oh not until last year, well it’ll be a year next month. Yeah, yeah it happened very fast. I didn’t mean for it to come to what it did. That is, I wasn’t trying to get pregnant at summer camp, and not with a stranger. We’re kids, we don’t intend on being kids with kids! I don’t think I really knew it was going to be like this, though. 

I have always been a huge band geek. I’m partial to the piano, though. My mom likes very classical music and my dad likes rock and jazz and that kind of stuff, and the piano can do both. I don’t mean to sound like ‘deep’ or anything, either, but to be a blend of my parents’ styles is kinda symbolic. And there's that thing where pianos are black and white, and my dad is black and my mom is white. I don’t know, doc, I suppose that pianos just embody my soul. I know, cheesy yadda. I’m gonna double major English and Psych when I go to college in the fall, what’d you expect?

But I went to this really good summer camp from young musicians last year. Usually, I’m like a councilor for my local crappy music camp for little kids, but my parents finally let me go to a city for a whole 5 weeks to do this pre-college musicians camp! 

So, it’s my first day there and I’m just kinda wandering around. There’s like one little green area in this whole urban wasteland, and there’s one scrawny red-haired boy just sitting out there with his guitar. He’s just zoning out on the first day. The first day! So I’m like, I have to find out this kid’s MO. Why isn’t he socializing with everyone else? He’s just sitting under a tree with an acoustic guitar, I’m so interested in what he’s up to. 

I kinda stalked David for the first week, not gonna lie. He was so peculiar. He would make everyone laugh at like the morning meetings and he was super friendly, but around dinner time every SINGLE day, this kid would sit under the tree with his acoustic guitar and just go into his own little world. 

So I sat down with him one night. I think he must’ve been really confused because he asked me if he could help me with something, but I told him he could help me by playing something on his guitar. 

He blushed profusely and began to strum something sweet. I can’t remember what, but when he finished my eyes were closed and I was leaning on the tree and I couldn’t shake a smile. 

‘Was that what you wanted?’ he asked me.

And I honestly was jerked back from fairyland or whatever the fuck to be like, met face to face with him staring me down like I was trying to kill his dog.

‘Why are you so angry right now? At activities, you’re always really friendly. David, right?’

‘I-I’m having my me time.’ he decided to say, but I wasn’t sure he was sure about that response.

I can’t remember exactly how the conversation started, but I do know we talked out there longer than David would have liked. I asked him how he learned to play, and he asked me how I learned to play. I got him to laugh, which felt amazing. He has the best laugh, you know like he was exhaling pure happiness with every chuckle. Simply amazing.  
‘So why do you come out here for your me-time, David?’ I asked him.

And he got all serious again. He told me it was what he would do at home and stood up and was about to leave. I knew I had struck a nerve, or struck a chord I guess you could say, but the absolute last thing I wanted was for David to leave. I was really starting to like him. 

‘Gwen, I’m sorry. You’re a cool girl, I’m sure, but I’m not sure if you really want to hang out with me. You could be hanging out with any person in this whole camp, I’m just some loser. Don’t let me waste any of your time.’

I remember having so many things to say but I couldn’t even speak. I just blushed and looked down. I sat out there until lights out was called and I had to go back to the dorm I was staying in. I didn’t sleep that night. I really liked David, but I was still a kid, I am still a kid, I don’t know how to effectively display emotions. So I wrote him a letter.

I poetically articulated that I found him intriguing and that I wanted nothing more than to get to know him. He was the coolest person, to me. And if I want something, I am gonna get it. David tells me it’s my Capricorn nature, but I don’t really believe in all that Zodiac business. 

And we spent forever talking in the next two weeks. He told me about life living in one town for his whole existence, and how he lived with and he had so many siblings. I kinda envied him, I think. 

It wasn’t until mid-July when we got, you know, intimate. And we had to be really sneaky about it. David was really hesitant, and he kept asking me if I was sure about it. But I was a 17 and a half-year-old virgin, and everyone in my high school was boring. If I was going to lose it to anyone, I’d want it to be someone cool. We had makeshift protection because we weren’t allowed real condoms in camp, but not for a lack of trying. And in hindsight that was probably a bad idea because I mean, doc, you know the outcome, I’m eighteen with a kid and postpartum depression, that’s why I’m here. So saran-wrapping your boyfriend’s thing is probably a bad idea. 

I’m sure you don’t want to hear the details, doc, so I’ll spare you, but I didn’t know I was pregnant for a while. Camp ended and I took David’s phone number and told him I would try to come to visit in October. He lived right near the Salem Witch Museums in New England, and I like history so there was no way I would pass up an excuse to see some weird gothic history, that’s like right up my alley.

I found out in September when I was already 9 weeks pregnant. I took a pregnancy test at school, after picking one up on my bike ride that day. I was so scared to see a plus sign, I really was. I was at that point living in Baltimore, which was a good thousand miles from my baby daddy in Boston. I wasn’t sure what to tell my parents, because they just thought David was a friend from my time in New York for the summer, I thought they would be so upset with me. And I mean they were upset.

I think my mom was starting to think something was when I started to refuse to have maple syrup on my pancakes because it was just way too sweet. I mean, I was a maple syrup fiend doc! But pregnancy gave me this awful aversion to it. And I was morning sick every hour of the day. I was at home for a few days because I threw up in class, and my mom thought it was flu but I had no fever. 

She handed me a pregnancy test one day. I just stared at it, because I knew what it would say. But I pretended I didn’t know and took it. I wasn’t surprised when I was a big fat positive, but I think my mom was. She just sat me down and asked me if I wanted to call the father. I told her that I wasn’t sure how he’d react and asked if I could do it in person over the long weekend for Columbus day. So that’s how I wound in Boston for a weekend.

I had my first prenatal appointment the Tuesday before. Telling my dad was weird because he didn’t say anything, but they had a few days to cool off before the appointment so I think that they were okay by that time. My mom was even excited, I think. Again, she wanted more kids. The doctors told me I was now 12 weeks, which sounded bonkers. And they told me a due date, too, which was scary. But the scariest moment was seeing my baby up on that screen. They had a heartbeat monitor thing running and this warbling hummingbird sound filled the room. It was insane. And there was the really weird grey tadpole on the TV screen. I cried, and my mom and dad cried. They printed off some pictures of the baby and my mom scribbled the ‘coming April’ and hung it on the fridge. I kept a picture for David to have if he wanted one.

Time already? I was just getting into it! Yeah, sure I am available this time next week. Oh okay, well thanks for listening, doc.”


	2. Ch. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've decided that odd chapters (1,3,5 etc.) will be Gwen talking first person in therapy about past events and even chapters (2,4,6 etc.) will be the present and focus on what David, Max, and Gwen's lives are now. Hope that makes sense!

Gwen returns home to her parents' house. She's not surprised to see that David is sitting on her couch. "Hi, David," she remarks half-heartedly. It's not like she isn't excited to see him, it's just that she's emotionally exhausted and David tends to ask a lot of questions. 

“Gwen! I didn't think you'd be back yet! Was therapy good? Was it, uh, therapeutic?" He says as he stands up quickly. David is at her house a lot because he wants to spend time with Max. David is a good kid, he loves his son, and he already is a lot better parent than Gwen feels that she is.

"How is he?" Gwen deflects when she sees that Max was with David on the couch. He has a little bouncer so that David and Gwen can watch a movie with him or have him in the kitchen. Gwen never uses it because she is afraid the TV would be too loud, and he is so small and fragile. 

"Hi, mommy!" David says in a high-pitched voice as he takes Max's little arm and waves it around like Max was waving hello. Max does not look impressed to be woken up. "I am sleepy from crying for hours on end! I missed you while you were gone!" David smiles and Gwen lets out a little chuckle as she sits beside the rocker. "He's good?" she asks again, this time wanting a serious answer. David senses that, too.

"Gwen, he's okay. He's all fed, and he was changed just a little while ago. And that's all that a 1-month-old baby needs, Gwen. He eats, sleeps, and goes pee. That's it." 

Gwen sighs and relaxes into the couch. "You know I leave tonight, Gwen? It's Sunday, which means I have to get back for classes." 

Gwen turns to her boyfriend and pouts at him. "It feels like two days ago you got here!" she retorts. 

"It was." David laughs. "I have just three more weeks of school, and then I am all yours for the entire summer, I promise. And we are going to be together again in less than a week." 

"That's too long! I can't wait until Friday!" She groans as she digs her face into David's side. He pats her head and kisses her forehead gently. 

"I know," David says in what may be a reply to Gwen or what may be just mutter to himself. 

Gwen and David cuddle on the couch for a while, and Gwen is trying to inhale so much of David's scent that it will last her until Friday when she brings Max on the impossibly long car ride to David's house. David's parents met Max the day after he was born, but they have other young children, so they went home pretty quickly. Now, Gwen was spending an entire two weeks with them, which will conclude with Gwen getting to attend David's graduation from high school while David's aunts fawn over Max. 

"Gwensiepoo! I made lasagna!" A voice calls from the other room. Gwen groans as her dad walks into the living room to call Gwen out for dinner. "David, you can have some before you head off, dear!" 

David stands up and smiles. "Maybe I'll pack some for the train ride. I really should get going, It'll be a long ride home." Gwen's dad only nodded and motioned with his arms for David to follow. Gwen picks up baby Max, who is angered by his mother waking him from dreaming about something extraordinary. He squirms in Gwen's arms. Gwen goes downstairs to put Max in his crib for the night, or until he wakes up wailing for whatever Gwen can provide him, and she closes the light and promises to a person who is too young to understand that she will only be gone a moment. 

Gwen appears in the kitchen to see David already has his suitcase ready and a Tupperware of lasagna in his hand. He is hugging Gwen's mom when he locks eyes with Gwen. "He's down for the night, huh?" David asks, clearly about Max. 

Gwen shrugs. "He's asleep until he's not. And with my luck, he won't be for long. That kid will not stay asleep, I tell you." 

"Neither did you, Gweniwennie." Her dad chimes in with a mouth full of lasagna. David goes to hug Gwen and pulls her in for as long as he can. 

"Gwen, you promise to text me if you're feeling bad again, okay? It's okay, and Max will love you for the awesome mom you are, I promise." Gwen probably would have started crying if she wasn't so hungry. Spending all day every day being sucked dry really works up your appetite, she discovered pretty quickly to her dismay. 

"I am going to facetime you once you get out of school, okay? And you're going to tell me how your day was and how many hours until Friday at 5:00, and it will almost be like you never left." Gwen tells David. She never meant to get so attached, but David didn't seem to mind her being absolutely bored while David still had an interesting life besides diaper changes and baby shrieks. 

When David leaves, Gwen pulls the baby monitor out of her purse and watches it incessantly throughout dinner. Her parents give meaningful glances at her, not knowing how to help. 

"Gwen, darling, you don't need to be always watching that thing. He's okay. You can eat dinner without watching him through that camera, you know?" Gwen's mom says lovingly as she puts her hand over Gwen's. "I know you care, but I promise you one hour without you baby isn't bad parenting. Actually, it's healthier for you to not be there every second." 

Gwen knew her mom had a point, but the paranoia stepped in every moment she wasn't checking up on Max. The only way David got her to not look at the screen when she ran errands and went to her first therapy session earlier was because he promised he would not take his eyes off of Max, and some part of Gwen trusted some part of David that knew he wasn't lying.

Gwen put down the monitor but involuntarily began to bounce her leg up and down. She eats the lasagna and drinks some iced tea and talks with her parents about what she bought at the store and how therapy was. 

In turn, her parents talk about their days, mostly how drab and bleak they were. Her mom was at work all day while her dad made the lasagna. Her mom listened to a new podcast on the way home from work, and her Dad watched Wheel of Fortune on TV with David. 

Gwen excuses herself after what seems like an eternity and quickly goes downstairs to see Max. She knows it has been a few hours since he's been fed, and she's already feeling heavy. He's surprisingly still asleep, but when Gwen turns on the light in their room he stirs. 

"Their room" was more like they coinhabited a large space that was once her mom's wine cellar. There is a side of it designated to Max and a side designated to Gwen, but it technically is the same room. Max's crib is the closest part to the door, and Gwen's quick to scoop him from his bed and bring him to the rocking chair next to the wall. Max starts to cry just before she let him breastfeed, but that must have been exactly what he wanted because he starts to eat dinner very quickly. 

Gwen wasn't prepared for breastfeeding to hurt. Human evolution already screwed over mothers with the whole birth process, but to also endure breastfeed, which while it is in no way as bad as birth, was every few hours of every day seems both literally and mentally draining. Gwen only dreads when the time comes that Max will get teeth because if it does not feel nice now it certainly will not feel nice then. 

Gwen likes to talk to Max while he eats his dinner to keep her mind off the whole situation. She knows he doesn't understand yet, but she also knows he recognizes the sound of her voice, and familiar talking is scientifically proven to relax babies. 

"Little buddy, we are going to visit Dad's family this week. I am going to drive for the first time with just you and me in the car, so you better go easy on me I swear. I won't lie, Max, I'm nervous. The last time I was with your Dad's parents was when I was just coming down off the epidural and sleep-deprived. And the other times I was not the best impression. I really want them to like me because I like your Dad so much. I know they already like you, don't worry." She soothes when Max starts to fuss a bit. 

Gwen continues, "You better never even look at a girl until you're twenty-one, okay? Having a kid as a kid is not a good idea, and I really cannot emotionally be a thirty-something grandmother, so you have to wait on that. Oh, and you're the first word better be mommy or I am going to cry, okay?" she rocks Max back and forth. She's gone over this plan with Max before, and she probably will continue to go over it until she is in a nursing home. 

Once Max is clearly done with his meal, she pats him on the back and snuggles him for a while. She knows that he probably will need a diaper change soon so she shouldn't try to catch any sleep yet, though sleep is futile with a month old baby. 

Gwen catches herself humming something to Max while they sit together in the rocking chair. It's one of the piano songs she used to play for Max when she was pregnant. He seems to like the piano, and she hopes he takes an interest in music like his parents. 

After she finally changes the grumpy little goblin's diaper and puts him in his crib for hopefully more than three hours, she is about to get as much sleep as she can when she looks at the keyboard next to the door on the other side from Max's crib. 

"Oh, just one song." She says out loud, talking perhaps to herself or to Max, she's not even sure. 

She ponders for a second on what to play before she settles on their song: David and Gwen's song. 

Her fingers become a part of the keys as she moves with them to the jazz. She plays a piano rendition of Fly Me to the Moon and can almost hear David singing while she plays as they had done so before. 

Time seems no existent as Gwen escapes into the sounds. She feels truly herself, and the world feels light. 

And she can almost see David at the keyboard beside her, and suddenly they're a year younger and they are at music camp and everything is simple and love is pure and the sky has no darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Fly Me to the Moon Midnight version for the idea of what I was thinking Gwen was playing at the end there. 
> 
> Thanks for enjoying so far :)

**Author's Note:**

> Had this in my draft works for a while, thought I'd finally get this out there. Sorry if it's a cringey way of setting up the story, I just thought it would be an interesting way of conveying what I need to convey. Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> I will try updating this on Mondays, if I can!


End file.
